A Whole Lot of Lego
I am a lucky man. Not only have I been blessed with a fantastic head of hair, but my wife actually reads my blog. She picked up on the – not too subtle hint (see monofigs) – hidden in a previous post. Recently, it was my birthday and, like any grown man, the thing I wanted more than anything else was childhood toys. I was very pleased to receive no less than 18.5kg of second hand Lego. Yes, you read that right – 18.5Kg. That’s a whole lot of Lego.
My present was actually made up of separate job lots. One of them (the one in the blue bag thing) I have already had the joy of looking through as I was called upon by my wife to confirm it was a good deal before she bought it. So, for that reason, I will begin with the unknown black box.
The Black Box
A quick look through and there seems to be a whole bunch of random toys, so let’s remove them. Also there is a bunch of non-Lego brand building blocks (it feels wrong to touch them) so I’ll remove them where I can. Some of these are really obvious because the colour stands out as wrong – notice the weird yellow colour.
Then it is on to the real fun: searching through the pile and pulling out large pieces that might tell me what sets are in here, and of course finding any figs I can get my hands on. I took the box downstairs and emptied it out onto the rug. This was whilst my children were either asleep or at school so I had the whole hour-long lunch break to start sorting.
At first I worked quickly, just moving the Lego around and pulling out minifig parts: heads, torsos, legs, hats, accessories and, in this case, arms and hands – it seems whomever had this Lego before me was not too kind to his minifigs.
Before I go through the pile of pulled out fig parts properly, I can’t help noticing some interesting pieces. I find this head and this torso, both seem interesting and I can’t wait to find out exactly who they are for. There are a fair few figs I know I have already; a robin, some batmen, storm troopers and few Harry Potters. But there are definitely some figures that catch my eye.
I tidy it all back into the box (except the removed toys, non-Lego, large pieces and minifig parts) and head back to work. Later that evening, I sit down with a small box of minifigures and work through them to find out what might be here, I’m not disappointed.
The torso with the apron belongs to Molly Weasley from the Burrow set. This is very exciting as it might mean other figures from that set are here. Sure enough, I find all of Arthur Weasley, a lot of Ginny (missing her legs) and also Fenrir Greyback (that was the head from earlier). I’m chuffed with this as I don’t have these figs in my collection – well, I do now! There are a couple of Dobby heads which is nice, and I have a few other Harry Potter character torsos, looks like a quidditch match pair but I’m not sure which heads they require.
Mystery Finds
Staying on torsos I found this. It could be, under all that pen, the torso for the mechanic from Indiana Jones. I have most of an Indiana Jones Snr figure, so the bundle may include Indi and friends. I look up the torso and find that it is only in two minifigs – the other being Dastan from Price of Persia.
Whilst searching through the job lot, I often pull out large or unique piece of Lego that I think will help identify the sets within. I found a large dark green sloped piece (6 x 1 x 5). I looked it up and to my delight the dark green version of this piece only appears in one set: 7683-1 Fight on the flying wing. the Indiana Jones set that come with the airplane mechanic (for those of you that haven’t yet remembered Indiana Jones fights him in front of an airplane and the guy gets chopped up by a propeller). This is particularly exiting as I have almost all of the Indiana Jones minifigs, it is the licensed theme I am closest to completing.
But the torso is not in the best of shape (I’m talking about the pen he is obviously has a perfect six-pack) so I’ll have to figure out the best way to clean pen (looks like biro or felt-tip) off Lego.
Pen on Lego
I’ve often found figures or pieces that have been coloured in – I have a strange custom Mario I found in one job lot – but I’ve never before attempted to clean them. This figure is important enough to find out how easy or difficult it is.
A quick search online leads me to believe that alcohol-based liquids might help. I’m not talking about vodka or beer but perfume and aftershave. I didn’t want to use up my wife’s perfume, so I found some old aftershave (that I never use) and tried that. To be honest I tried a couple of other cleaning liquids first, including make up remover and kitchen surface spray. I had to rub quite hard with those two and although it made a slight difference, it didn’t work as well as I hoped. So, onto the aftershave it was. I decided to start with an old-looking storm trooper helmet (something I don’t mind ruining if the aftershave melted the whole thing into a mess). It worked amazingly. The pen just wiped away.
The Trouble with Job Lots
So now I have the torso for the mechanic. Unfortunately, I have not found the head. This is always the trouble with job lots – incomplete sets and figures. this was sold to my wife as ‘my entire collection’ which the seller has obviously had for years, but it means he has lost much of it, particularly minifigure parts. A perfect example of this phenomena is this torso.
A Cool Fig
I found it and wondered what it was from. I spent an good few minutes scrolling through pages of blue torsos on bricklink before I found it and wow! It is from a specific minifig. Hector Barbossa with peg-leg. This figure only appears in one set – Fountain of Youth – which contains four minifigs. Barbossa, Jack sparrow (which I have) a skeleton ( I have a few) and Black Beard! Wow! That is a cool fig, but no sign of it amongst all this Lego so far. Admittedly, I might not have found it yet as I am still digging out parts sporadically, I think I have at least 95% of minifigs parts so far so I’d expect I would have found him already if he was here.
Back to the mechanic. I haven’t found his head. His legs are fairly basic dark tan legs, no special patterns on so I can find them from my existing spares, but his head. I looked it up and it’s a pretty cool one with a big moustache and a wonky smile, it reminded me of another figure… That got me thinking. I checked and, sure enough, the head appears on just three figures, the other two being star wars figs. I have an OK Star Wars figure collection (If I’m honest the Star Wars theme has way too many for me to even consider trying to complete). So I check one of my frames hung up in the TV room and, sure enough, there he is, the Hoth Rebel Trooper from the 2012 Advent calendar. I’m a fan of the calendars and their figs but I think I’ll take his head and put it on the mechanic, it feels like a better figure to me.
In my next post, I’ll go through the remains of the figure I have in this batch and work out which ones I can complete and which will be just parts. Then there will be further blogs where I look into the big blue bag (I’m excited)…
